Saturday, November 08, 2014

Twenty Five Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Now What?

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

To Contain Russia, the U.S. Should Return to Cold War Policies

Who can forget November 9, 1989? On this date, jubilant German citizens from West and East stood atop the once imposing Berlin Wall, a symbol of Europe’s four decades of division. The simple notion that Europe should be whole and free, put forward by U.S. President George H.W. Bush earlier that spring in Mainz, no longer seemed a distant dream. After all, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appeared committed to allowing Eastern Europeans the freedom to choose their own futures—and why wouldn’t they choose democracy and market economies? Twenty-five years later, Americans and Europeans should be quite pleased with the many successes of their joint endeavor to build a Europe whole, free, and at peace.

But after a period of expansion, it now seems that the West has reached the limit of its post-1989 Europe policy. Paradoxically, it must return to principles formulated in 1949—to concentrate on consolidating its gains while containing the threat that Russia poses.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, George H.W. Bush, working with then–West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and other European leaders, ensured the peaceful unification of Germany. Bill Clinton subsequently ended the war in Bosnia; enabled the inclusion of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in NATO; and ultimately led the Alliance to defend the population of Kosovo. George W. Bush promoted NATO’s expansion to include even more of Europe, while his Western European counterparts pursued the enlargement of the European Union. Two more countries, Albania and Croatia, joined NATO early in Barack Obama’s presidency. The successes of these new member states is due in part to the prospect of NATO and EU membership; the greater credit is due to the determination of populations and governments in Central and Eastern Europe to carry out political and economic reforms in order to join Europe’s zone of peace and prosperity.

In the early 1990s, the West hoped Russia would pursue this path as well. Boris Yeltsin came to power competing with Gorbachev by promising to be even more pro-Western, pro-democracy, and pro-markets than the Soviet leader. In an effort to strengthen his position as president of Russia, Yeltsin promoted the independence of the other Soviet republics in order to bring Gorbachev’s political career to a close. Yeltsin would soon complain about NATO enlargement and later the Kosovo war, but he always looked for ways to appear as part of the Western club, reveling, for example, in joining the Group of Eight (G-8). In the 1990s, with the United States ascendant and Russia trying to find its way, it seemed that a Europe that was whole, free, and at peace might truly be possible.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is clear that this policy has run its course. While most of Europe is free to pursue peace and prosperity, secure within the NATO alliance, Russia’s revived imperialism under Vladimir Putin has drawn a new line in Europe. The Russian president has illustrated, in 2008 in Georgia and in 2014 in Ukraine, that he will not permit former Soviet republics to join the EU and NATO. Moreover, he has begun to undermine those former republics—Estonia and Latvia—previously thought to be securely within the new Europe.

A revived strategy of containment is necessary to counter Russian aggression. Without stating this as his policy, President Obama has pursued this course since March, in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea. He has worked assiduously with his European counterparts to impose biting sanctions on the Russian elite as well as on key sectors of the Russian economy. At the same time, he has worked to reassure NATO allies in the East that the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article V commitment (which states that an attack on any member of the Alliance will be considered an attack on all members) remains robust. Obama’s attitude toward Putin is consistent with the approach U.S. diplomat George Kennan fostered in the late 1940s: keep Russia from undermining Western interests in Europe while waiting for internal pressures to eventually effect a shift in Moscow’s policy over the long term. The West cannot allow Putin’s aggression to destabilize the order it has constructed in most of Europe through the EU and NATO. Moreover, a vastly improved relationship with Russia must await new leadership in the Kremlin (and Putin may well remain as president through at least 2024 if elected to another term in 2018).

Formalizing a renewed doctrine of containment today would require that President Obama adjust his current policy to further bolster NATO and help Ukraine. Rather than simply settle for the idea of a small rapid response force that could be deployed on NATO’s eastern territory, the United States should push for the permanent stationing of troops in NATO frontline states to underscore the seriousness of purpose of the Alliance. And the United States should assist the Ukrainian government by providing lethal military aid—impeding Putin’s successful efforts to date to disrupt the ability of the government in Kiev to establish order across the country. Consonant with the 1949 approach, the West must prevent Putin from appropriating more territory while acknowledging that Russia’s opposition to NATO and EU enlargement impedes the full implementation of the 1989 policy of a Europe whole and free.

Ultimately, Obama will need to publicly acknowledge that, given the current regime in Moscow, the United States and its European partners must contain the threat posed by Russia to the post–Cold War European order. Just as it did during the four decades of the Cold War, the West must remain hopeful that countries like Ukraine and Georgia will ultimately control their entire territories and be free to pursue their own futures, while maintaining pressure on Russia with hopes of moderating the Kremlin’s policy down the road. The post-1989 dream that Europe would be whole, free, and at peace yet again rests on another successful application of the West’s containment policy of 1949.

James Goldgeier is Dean of the School of International Service at American University and author of Not Whether But When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO. You can follow him on Twitter @JimGoldgeier.

Just a couple of thoughts and a lesson on the advantages and political incentives of being a nuclear power:

Germany and Poland are both Nato allies. I believe that Germany would not go to war to assist Ukraine in an all in Russian attack. Poland probably would. I’m not sure that Germany would be able to stay out for long, if Poland decided to assist Ukraine and was engaging Russian troops. What is very clear to me is that Ukraine made a huge mistake not retaining nuclear weapons. The game would be very different were they a nuclear power. There is a lesson to other European powers in that NATO had better come to the aid of other NATO members in deterring the Russians or it will be Eastern Europeans that will demand their own nuclear weapons.

The lesson would be compounded if the US or backs an Israeli attack on the Iranians.

I'm not sure that I implied they were. Poland is and if Poland supports and engages with the Ukrainians, Germany will get very nervous. The main point is that Ukraine would not be in this mess if they had retained their nuclear weapons. It is irrelevant whether or not Ukraine is a Nato member. There exists a pesky little document, signed by the US and others "The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances".

... a political agreement signed in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine as well as those of Belarus and Kazakhstan. As a result Ukraine gave up the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile between 1994 and 1996,[2][3] of which Ukraine had physical though not operational control. The use of the weapons was dependent on Russian controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system.

Following the 2014 Crimean crisis, the U.S., Canada, the U.K.,as well as the other countries all separately stated that Russian involvement is in breach of its obligations to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, and in clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia, however, argued that the Budapest memorandum does not apply to the 2014 Crimean crisis because separation of Crimea was driven by an internal political and social-economic crisis. Russia initially claimed it was never under obligation to force any part of Ukraine's civilian population to stay in Ukraine against its will.

However, the BM is typical of many documents put together by 'diplomats', weasel-words and bubblegum, imply a lot, commit to very little.

The Budapest Memorandum was negotiated as a political agreement. It refers to assurances, not defined, but less than a military guarantee of intervention.[1][15] According to Stephen MacFarlane, a professor of international relations "It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine."[14] In the U.S. neither the George H. W. Bush administration nor the Clinton administration was prepared to give a military commitment to Ukraine, nor did they believe the U.S. Senate would ratify an international treaty, so the memorandum was agreed as a political agreement.[15]

A political agreement. A political agreement is only good as an excuse to 'do' or to 'not do' anything.

The Russians and their surrogates in Ukraine seem intent on capturing enough of Ukraine’s coastline to create a land bridge to the Crimean peninsula. Putin has calculated Europe will not pay the price to stop them. Never give up your nukes.

The UKRAINIAN nukes were essentially Soviet nukes and under Russian control. The Budapest memorandum does not obligate the signatories to come to Ukraine's defense unlike the NATO treaty does for the signatories of it.

The US has supplied some 480 B61 thermonuclear bombs to five so-called “non-nuclear states”, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Casually disregarded by the Vienna based UN Nuclear Watchdog (IAEA), the US has actively contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Western Europe.

As part of this European stockpiling, Turkey, which is a partner of the US-led coalition against Iran along with Israel, possesses some 90 thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs at the Incirlik nuclear air base. (National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005)

By the recognised definition, these five countries are “undeclared nuclear weapons states”.

The stockpiling and deployment of tactical B61 in these five “non-nuclear states” are intended for targets in the Middle East. Moreover, in accordance with “NATO strike plans”, these thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs (stockpiled by the “non-nuclear States”) could be launched “against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran” ( quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005)

Among the five “undeclared nuclear states”, “Germany remains the most heavily nuclearized country with three nuclear bases (two of which are fully operational) and may store as many as 150 [B61 bunker buster ] bombs” (Ibid). In accordance with “NATO strike plans” (mentioned above) these tactical nuclear weapons are also targeted at the Middle East.

While Germany is not categorized officially as a nuclear power, it produces nuclear warheads for the French Navy. It stockpiles nuclear warheads (made in America) and it has the capabilities of delivering nuclear weapons. Moreover, The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company – EADS , a Franco-German-Spanish joint venture, controlled by Deutsche Aerospace and the powerful Daimler Group is Europe’s second largest military producer, supplying .France’s M51 nuclear missile.

Germany imports and deploys nuclear weapons from the US. It also produces nuclear warheads which are exported to France.

Forty-three Mexican students who went missing six weeks ago were likely abducted by police and handed over to a local gang who murdered them and burned their bodies, Mexico’s attorney general said Friday.

Authorities have been searching for the aspiring teachers since gang-linked police attacked their buses in the southern city of Iguala on September 26, allegedly under orders of the mayor and his wife in a night of terror that left six people dead.

"To the parents of the missing young men and society as a whole, I assure you that we won't stop until justice is served," Pena Nieto said.

If the testimonies are proven true, it would be one of the worst massacres in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left 22,000 others missing since 2006.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam warned that it would be difficult to identify the charred remains and that authorities will continue to consider the students as missing until DNA tests confirm the identities.

He added, however, that there was "a lot of evidence... that could indicate it was them."

Three Guerreros Unidos gang members confessed to killing the male students after police handed them over between Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula, Murillo Karam said, showing videos of the taped confessions.

The bodies were set on fire down a hill from a Cocula garbage dump with gasoline, tires, firewood and plastic, in an inferno that lasted 14 hours, he said.

"The fire lasted from midnight to 2.00pm the next day. The criminals could not handle the bodies until 5.00pm due to the heat," he said.

“Mexico is a country where the rule of law is used exclusively to explain and justify inaction and negligence from government and elected representatives,” said José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division.

There’s no serious argument that ethnic Russians were being widely persecuted in Donetsk and other eastern Ukrainian cities. Nor does it much matter

Frankly, since Russia is just using that as an excuse to play realpolitik in a place where Moscow has vastly more power on the spot. True, in ethnically Russian cities like Donetsk, it can flaunt the rules. But there are plenty of places where Russia doesn’t have more power on the spot – and the two should be linked.

If the US wants Russia to buy back into the idea of territorial sovereignty in Ukraine, it must remind Russia that ethnic self-determination cuts both ways. The rules of the system are not just a hypocrisy of the reigning superpower to lighten its burden, but have real benefits, not least for Russia. Because its borders, in many places, make no sense.

Russia stands on disputed territory everywhere: in the southern Kurile Islands off Japan, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia off Georgia, on restive Muslim areas in the Caucasus, and now in Crimea. Closer to Central Asia, it rules several additional Muslim populations like the Tatars, who don’t have their own states only by the whim of early Soviet cartographers. More than 20 percent of Russia’s population are minorities, since historically Russia’s borders have fluctuated wildly. It thus needs reminding that discarding territorial integrity can have serious consequences elsewhere.

The United States should issue a strong statement supporting Japan’s ownership of the southern Kurile Islands.Reengage—loudly--with the Europeans and Tbilisi launching Georgia’s NATO Membership Action Plan.Refer to Chechnya and Dagestan as “disputed” areas, at the UN and other multilateral fora. Nothing would rattle Russian confidence like the prospect of United States officials meeting – even expressing interest in meeting – opposition leaders in Dagestan. And perhaps the Tatars should have their own state as well. Maybe the UN should look into it.

Yes, there are many ethnic Russians in Europe. There are also many non-Russians in Russia. Let the Kremlin chew on what real revisionism would look like.

- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/05/02/Russia-Can-Lose-Territory-Too-It-should-worry#sthash.r9tEsBVw.dpuf

"Of course, the obvious reason for the decline in global oil prices is the slowdown in the rate of [global] economic growth, which means energy consumption being reduced in a whole range of countries," Putin said, according to a text released by the Kremlin.

"In addition, a political component is always present in oil prices. Furthermore, at some moments of crisis it starts to feel like it is the politics that prevails in the pricing of energy resources."

(Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish forces have blunted but not broken the siege of the Syrian border town of Kobani, a week after arriving to great fanfare with heavy weapons and fighters in a bid to save it from Islamic State.

Kobani has become a test of the U.S.-led coalition's ability to halt the advance of the Sunni Muslim insurgents. The town is one of few areas in Syria where it can co-ordinate air strikes with operations by an effective ground force.

The arrival of the Iraqi Kurd peshmerga, or "those who face death," with armored vehicles and artillery, has enabled them to shell Islamic State positions around Kobani and take back some villages.

But the front lines in the town itself are little changed, its eastern part still controlled by the insurgents, and the west still largely held by the main Syrian Kurdish armed group, the YPG, and allied fighters.

"There is no change at all in Kobani as a result of the peshmerga. Maybe one or two streets are gained then lost, back and forth," said Rami Abdulrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war.

"ISIS (Islamic State) posts are well entrenched in Kobani city, and the Kurds say they need more heavy weaponry to make a dent ... There also needs to be better co-ordination between the Kurdish units and coalition air forces," he said, adding that Islamic State suicide attacks were also proving effective.

ISTANBUL — The Free Syrian Army (FSA) has decided to send 1500 troops to Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani to fight against ISIS militants on Thursday, according to FSA sources.

The troops will be moving into Kobani within 36 hours, sources said.

"We expect the U.S.-led coalition to support our troops. The cooperation between the forces fighting against ISIS in Kobani is extremely important," an FSA official said.

Earlier this week Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu criticized Washington's decision to assist the Democratic Union Party (PYD) instead of the Free Syrian Army combatting both the Bashar Assad regime and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and said the FSA also should be supported in the region...

Standing in front of a VA Medical Center construction site, Landrieu called Cassidy “wishy-washy, unreliable, undependable, not sure who he is, not sure who he was and not sure who he wants to be.”

Landrieu then proceeded to ask, “When this hospital needed a champion to build and rebuild, literally out of the rubble of Katrina and Rita, where was Sen. Landrieu? Standing here and fighting. Where was Bill?”

She even tweeted, “When the New Orleans VA hospital needed to be rebuilt out of the rubble of Katrina & Rita, Where Was Bill?” with a link to a press coverage of her news conference.---The attack was an odd one to make, considering Cassidy wasn’t involved in politics at the time. He wasn’t elected to Louisiana’s state Senate until 2006 and Congress until 2008, while hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the state in 2005.

The next day, Rep. Bill Cassidy told Louisianans where he was. At the time of Katrina and Rita, Cassidy was a medical doctor in Baton Rogue, he wrote on Twitter. Moreover, immediately after Katrina hit, Cassidy took the initiative in setting up a makeshift emergency hospital in an abandoned K-Mart to administer aid and care for victims.

A cynic would say Obama was being clever in choosing a black women for the post making it pretty much impossible for the GOP to reject her nomination without once again facing charges of racism and/or misogyny.

Don't know much about her except she has prosecuted some interesting cases. The one good thing is she is not part of Obama's network of old friends, political hacks, and hanger-ons that have populated his administration for the last six years.

If the Republicans will just stick with her own words, she is vulnerable. She has had much to say about white folk. Her comment about voter ID laws being a relic from the KKK South is a definite keeper. Her arrogance might prove her undoing.

(Reuters) - U.S. air strikes destroyed an Islamic State convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosul but U.S. officials said on Saturday it was unclear whether the group's top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been in any of the 10 targeted vehicles.

Colonel Patrick Ryder, a Central Command spokesman, said the U.S. military had reason to believe that the convoy was carrying leaders of Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot which controls large chunks of Iraq and Syria.

The convoy consisted of 10 Islamic State armed trucks.

"I can confirm that coalition aircraft did conduct a series of air strikes yesterday evening in Iraq against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders near Mosul," said Ryder, using another name for Islamic State.

"We cannot confirm if ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present."

Islamic State had been changing its strategy since the air strikes began, switching to lower profile vehicles to avoid being targeted, according to residents of towns the group holds.

A Mosul morgue official said 50 bodies of Islamic State militants were brought to the facility after the air strike.

Mosul, northern Iraq's biggest city, was overrun on June 10 in an offensive that saw vast parts of Iraq's Sunni regions fall to the Islamic State and allied groups.

A month later a video posted online purported to show the reclusive Baghdadi preaching at Mosul's grand mosque.

Earlier on Saturday, Al-Hadath television channel said U.S.-led air strikes targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in a town near the Syrian border, possibly including Baghdadi.

Iraqi security officials were not immediately available for comment on the report from the station, part of Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, but two witnesses told Reuters an air strike targeted a house where senior Islamic State officers were meeting, near the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim.

Al-Hadath said dozens of people were killed and wounded in the strike in al-Qaim, and that Baghdadi's fate was unclear.

Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of Anbar's Provincial Council, also said there were air strikes in al-Qaim. He gave no details.

The U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes near al-Qaim overnight, destroying an Islamic State armored vehicle and two checkpoints run by the group, Ryder . . . . . . . . .

Just three years have passed since an American-led bombing campaign destroyed the regime of Moammar Khadafy in Libya. At first that operation felt like a victory for peace and freedom. By bringing down the dictator, we presumed we had “liberated” Libyans and that they would quickly settle into pro-American democracy.

The speed with which we have been proven disastrously wrong, however, is breathtaking. So is the sweeping scope of unintended consequences that have flowed from this intervention. Not even those who opposed it imagined how far-reaching its effects would be. This is likely to go down in history as the most ill-conceived intervention of the Obama era...

Recent reports from Libya, issued to coincide with the third anniversary of Khadafy’s overthrow and murder, suggest that the state has ceased to exist. There is no central government. According to Amnesty International, “Armed groups and militias are running amok, launching indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and committing widespread abuses, including war crimes, with complete impunity.” Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State back guerrilla factions. The unfortunate United Nations envoy, Bernardino Leon, says he can hardly begin to mediate “because the protagonists are hundreds of militias.” Full-scale civil war is a real possibility, so the worst may be yet to come...

American officials were split over the question of whether to bomb Libya in 2011. President Obama finally favored the pro-bombing faction, making this the first military intervention in American history — perhaps the first ever — to be driven principally by women. Its advocates inside the corridors of power were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, then on the National Security Council staff. They warned that Khadafy was planning to attack an opposition stronghold, Benghazi, and set off a humanitarian catastrophe. Although they may have been right, they grievously overestimated America’s ability to control the effects of bombing Libya. Fighting in Benghazi over the last month has taken more than 200 lives.

By the time we and our allies deposed Khadafy, he had renounced his nuclear ambitions, ceased to threaten our interests, and kept his country stable for decades, albeit with sometimes brutal methods. We promoted his overthrow without thinking seriously about what kind of regime might follow. Guided by a quintessentially American blend of naive optimism and cultural egocentrism, we allowed ourselves to believe we could crash violently into Libya, destroy all the institutions under which it had lived for more than 40 years, and blithely presume that things would somehow work themselves out peacefully and Libya would become “free.”

If we are getting intelligence on ISIS leadership targets, a power struggle is dividing the organization. This is not surprising. Indeed, the IDF has had great success for the same reason. There are no "good guys" in that part of the world.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.